


when he comes marching home

by deluxemycroft



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Bisexual Clint Barton, Blow Jobs, Deaf Clint Barton, Dubious Consent, M/M, Mind Control, Mind Control Aftermath & Recovery, Past Mind Control, Post-Avengers (2012), SHIELD, Therapy, Warning: Loki (Marvel), Worship, clint's childhood, please give this man a therapist, unethical therapeutic practices
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-11
Updated: 2020-01-17
Packaged: 2021-02-27 08:20:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 15,212
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22203982
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deluxemycroft/pseuds/deluxemycroft
Summary: Clint has to complete 10 mandated therapy sessions in order to return as an active field agent for SHIELD. He has a lot to talk about.
Relationships: Clint Barton/Loki
Comments: 14
Kudos: 91





	1. we'll give him a hearty welcome then

**Author's Note:**

> this actually started out as a 5+1 (5 times loki saves clint's life, +1 time clint saves loki's life), and it didn't really pan out that way, but just keep that in mind.
> 
> anyone know the best time to write for a pairing? is it a: when the movie comes out and the fandom is active, or b: 8 years later when no one is reading it. apparently i chose b for some reason
> 
> i always thought the headcanon about clint being threatened with jail or working as a shield agent was really interesting; why would it be smart to threaten someone into joining your organization? especially if its a top secret government agency tasked with defending the planet? wouldn't that create problems? what would make someone choose working for the government over jail? 
> 
> think i tagged all warnings, but if i missed something, just let me know.
> 
> fic is finished, i'll post a chapter every couple days.
> 
> not beta'd, just edited by me.
> 
> hope you enjoy!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> chapter titles are from 'when johnny comes marching home'

This is a new therapist. Clint has had a few of them—most because SHIELD required them, two because he wanted to see someone outside SHIELD before realizing they weren’t any better and Fury and Coulson could probably get their hands on his files anyway—and he’s not really feeling up to it. But before he goes back out in the field, he has to do his required 10 hours of therapy.

She waves him into her office and Clint picks the couch because it feels like a couch is more therapy-esque. She sits down on the chair across from him and picks up a clipboard and a pad of paper and a pen. Clint suddenly realizes he doesn’t know her name and glances around to see if he can find it, and his eyes land on the three diplomas on the wall. Doctorate in Clinical Psychology. He wonders if it’s supposed to make him feel insecure or if that’s just him. He never finished middle school, after all.

He looks down at his hands.

“My name is Elizabeth Salem,” she tells him. “My friends call me Eliza.”

“Great, Doc. I’m Clint. Uh, Barton. Clint Barton.” He grimaces at himself and motions to her clipboard. “Do I need to fill that out or something?”

She shakes her head. “I merely have some routine questions I have to ask and then we can begin to talk. Is that alright?”

Nobody ever asks him if it’s _alright_. But he nods, leans back, spreads his hands over his thighs, tries to get comfortable. “SHIELD already has all of my info. You can just get it from my files.”

She smiles slightly. “I’m not a SHIELD employee, Agent Barton. I am an outside consultant brought on specifically for you and your case.”

Great. That makes him feel just swell. Regular SHIELD therapists couldn’t hack him so they had to find someone special. He stops himself from rubbing the back of his neck.

Eliza looks at him and then back down to the clipboard. She writes something down and then meets his gaze again. “Age?”

“31. Or 30. I, uh, don’t know my exact year of birth.”

Her pen scratches and she nods. “What’s in your file?” she asks.

“1982. My brother was born in 1980 and he’s only a year or two older than me.”

“What’s your brother’s name, Clint?”

He doesn’t like how she jumped to familiarity so quick, but he doesn’t say anything. He rubs his palms over the thighs of his jeans. “Barney. We haven’t talked in a long time.”

“How long?”

He thinks. “Over a decade, at least. I skipped out on the circus at 19 and he stopped looking for me once I was 20, I think. Told me I was an adult and I could make my own mistakes.” He snorts. “Look where that got me.”

“Where did that get you?”

“I’m an Avenger, Doc. Pretty sure Barney’s still a petty thief.”

She writes something down and then taps her pen on the paper. “Race?”

“White. Caucasian.”

“Gender?”

“Male.”

“Sexuality.”

He almost says straight but then grimaces, looks away from her calm, open face. He’d always told the SHIELD therapists he was straight because he didn’t want to take the risk. “What do you do with these files, Doc? This information?”

“I copy it and then put it in a filing cabinet that is in a locked room only I have access to.”

He meets her gaze. “No computers?”

She shakes her head. “No computers,” she assures him, and her mouth turns up. “Do you have a problem with computers, Clint?”

“Naw,” he says, relieved. “They make it so I can hear, so I’m pretty good with them. I, uh, SHIELD can get into computers. Even yours.”

Eliza nods, writes something down. “Have they done that before?”

“Well, almost all my therapists were SHIELD, so I’m sure they were able to read the files. But if you’re not with them, then they shouldn't be able to read your notes. But if you were putting them on a computer, then SHIELD could find their way in.”

“Why do you work for an agency you distrust so much?” she asks, and when she asks it, she doesn’t look at him, keeping her eyes on the clipboard, pen at the ready.

“Well, exactly that, Doc. Because I work for them. I know what they’re capable of.”

She nods. “Sexuality?”

“Bisexual.”

It’s the first time he’s ever said it out loud, he thinks. Bobbi had asked, once, but he hadn’t been able to say it, and he thinks that’s one of the reasons she divorced him, because he hadn’t been able to admit it. He’s pretty sure Katie knows, or suspects, but he’s fine with that, he thinks. She’s gotta be gay anyway, or at least bisexual. Maybe that’s part of being Hawkeye.

“Relationship status?” she asks, and Clint looks up from wringing his hands in his lap to meet her gaze.

“Single.” Then, he thinks about it. He thinks about Loki. “Yeah, just single.”

“You sound unsure.”

He shakes his head. “Do you know what happened to me?”

Eliza lays down her pen and clasps her hands in her lap. She looks calm and confident and assured and Clint appreciates it, because he never really feels like that unless he’s on a mission, and even then, only sometimes. “I know something happened with Loki and his attempted invasion of Earth. I know enough to know I can help you.”

He can _feel_ himself clam up. “Yeah, Loki,” he chokes out, and Eliza looks away from him to pull open the desk drawer she’s sitting next to, and she pulls out a bottled water. She hands it over and Clint takes it. He checks the seal and then unscrews the cap, takes a long drink while she closes the drawer and then turns her attention back to him. “He stuck his hands in my brain and mixed me all up. I told Nat—”

“Nat?”

“Natasha Romanoff. Uh, the Black Widow. She’s an Avenger too. We’ve been partners for a long time. She tells people I saved her life but I think she kinda saved mine.” He winces; he didn’t mean to say that. Eliza doesn’t press, just writes down a quick note and then looks back at him. “Anyway, I told Nat that Loki unmade me, but he really didn’t. He just kind of tilted something inside of me that made me loyal to him.”

She nods. “Is that what you want to talk about?”

He chuckles, takes another drink of water, fiddles with the corner of the generic label around the plastic bottle. “I don’t want to talk about it,” he sighs. “But I will. I don’t like thinking about it.”

“Why is that?”

“Why I don’t like talking about it or why I don’t like thinking about it? Kind of two halves of the same coin, don’t you think?” He’s being antagonistic and he knows it, and he starts to apologize, but she just shakes her head.

“Don’t worry about it. How about you try to answer both questions, Clint. Why don’t you like thinking about Loki, and why don’t you like talking about him?”

Clint looks at her. He looks at her for a long time, longer than he meant to. There’s a clock on her desk right behind her, and there’s a shelf behind him with a picture of Eliza and a dog, a fake plant, and a small clock. They both keep track of the two minutes that he sits and stares at her.

Then, he finally cracks his mouth open and whispers, “He saved my life.”

That’s an even deeper secret than his sexuality. That’s something he’s barely been able to admit to himself. That’s something he thought he’d take to his goddamn grave. Eliza does him the honor of barely reacting other than a small, understanding nod. She doesn’t write anything down, but Clint notices that her fingers reach out to graze over her pen.

He looks down at her hands again. Her left hand is a prosthetic. He wonders if that’s why SHIELD chose her, if they thought he’d open up more to a disabled therapist. He thinks they might be right.

“By brainwashing you, Loki saved your life,” Eliza clarifies, and Clint looks down at the floor, trying not to look ashamed. “How about you go back to the beginning for me? As far back as you want.”

“The beginning? Of Loki?”

“No, of you.”

“Oh.” He has to think for a few seconds. “Well, I was a kid, y’know? My dad was a bastard, my ma wasn’t much better. It was kind of me and Barney against the world.”

“Where did you grow up?”

“Iowa.” She writes that down, fiddles a bit with the pen. “Hot summers, awful winters. It was winter when my dad killed my mom.”

To Eliza’s credit, she doesn’t really react at all. Clint’s grateful; he’s certain she’s heard a lot worse than his boring life. He might be an Avenger now but he’s really not _that_ interesting. He’s just some guy who can keep up with demigods and guys like Captain America and Tony Stark because he’s really good at one thing. “How did he kill her?”

“He got his license taken away for drunk driving. But he drove anyway. And he and ma went out one night and they got caught in a storm and he drove their car off the road.”

“How old were you, Clint?”

“I think eight or nine. I really only remember any of it because Barney told me about it.” He looks away from her, looks at the shelf on the wall behind her. It’s about three feet long, off to the right of the three diplomas, and there’s a plant in a pot and it has long, trailing vines. He’s never been good at keeping plants alive; he’s tried a few times, but either ends up over- or under-watering them and shamefully dumping them in a dumpster a few weeks later.

“What happened after your parents died?”

He glances at her and then looks away, stops himself from twisting his fingers in his jeans. “We ended up in the foster system because our dad’s brother or our mom’s brother wouldn’t take us.” For some reason, Eliza writes something down after he says that. “I think we stayed in the foster system for about six months until Barney decided we were gonna run off.”

“Where did you go?”

“The circus.”

At that, she smiles. She has nice teeth, Clint notices, and her smile makes her eyes brighten. He smiles back, a bit embarrassed. “The circus? Really?”

“Yeah,” he chuckles. “Barney got good at knife throwing and well, I picked up a bow and kinda never put it back down.”

She looks down at her clipboard and flips over a few pages, too quick for Clint to catch anything she wrote, but the first page is filled with small, cramped blue writing. Hopefully that’s normal. “I looked you up,” Eliza tells him unabashedly. Clint shrugs one shoulder. He’s used to it. Her quick eyes glance over him and then back down at the paper. “You’ve broken various world records. You were even invited to an United States Army competition when you were 22 and broke various records there.”

He grins. “Yeah, and with a rifle, too. Not my best with a gun, but I’m alright.”

To his delight, she rolls her eyes. “I can’t imagine what _you_ think is just alright.” Her fingers trace over the paper. “You even competed in the Olympics and you’ve won every marksmanship competition you’ve ever entered.”

He holds up a hand and then drops it immediately when her eyes flick to it. “I lost one, actually.” He rubs the back of his neck when she raises an eyebrow. “It was, uh, for charity kinda thing. This Make-A-Wish kid used to compete in archery competitions before he got sick, and they called me and asked me to come to a competition since the kid wanted to meet with me.”

He watches as she flips back to the first page and picks up her pen again.

“Anyway, the kid wanted to fire Hawkeye’s bow. He couldn’t pull the draw, he was too weak, cancer and all, but he wasn’t embarrassed or anything. He asked me to show him some tricks and I told him I would after I saw what he could do. We were at a fundraiser where people could raise money for, I think, cancer awareness or something? And there was a row of targets where if someone could hit one of the markers on a target, one of the donors would pay the amount of money on the marker to the fundraiser. It was kind of a fun thing for the kids, I think.

“So, this kid picks up his bow and there’s this announcer, right? And he announces that there’s going to be a shoot-off between this kid and the Amazing Hawkeye, and then a donor comes up to him and bets that if the kid can beat Hawkeye, he’ll donate like $100,000. Then someone else comes up and doubles that, and all these folks come up and say if this kid can beat me, they’ll end up donating like a total of a million dollars.”

“What was his name?” Eliza asks gently.

“Jamie,” Clint says after a moment. “I just remember his first name. There’s video of it online, by the way. But this kid picks up his bow and gives me this huge, shit-eating grin and nocks and arrow and Doc...it was beautiful. I haven’t seen someone that good in a long time. I think Kate’s the only one I’ve ever seen that’s that good. But he aimed and hit the smallest marker right smack in the middle. It was for, like, 250 grand. More money than I’ve ever seen in my life. And then I picked up my bow and didn’t even think about it, I just loosed an arrow and it hit right beneath the marker. Just so he’d win.”

“Could you have hit the marker, Clint?”

He nods immediately. “Easily. I’ve done way harder shit than that with a blindfold on. I just wanted that kid to win.” He looks away from her, looks at the clock. “I got a lot of shit for it when I came back, actually. A lot of agents thought I should’ve gone first or something, or put an arrow in the kid’s arrow, Robin Hood style. I guess I don’t see the attraction in besting a kid dying of cancer anyway.”

She writes that down and nods. “That’s very heroic of you,” she says. “Very noble.”

“First time for everything, right?” he says with a grin, and she smiles back.

“I just have a few more questions and then we’ll be done for today, if that’s alright.” Eliza waits for him to nod and then asks, “Any health concerns I should be made aware of?”

“Just deaf, or mostly, anyway. I wear hearing aids.” He pauses, thinks about Loki again. “I get headaches sometimes. Migraines.” He pauses again, really looks at her. Eliza just calmly looks back, lets him take his time figuring out if he’s going to say it or not. Finally, he says, “I don’t eat like I should. I think the headaches might come from that.”

She writes that down and then nods, almost to herself. “Have you been diagnosed with any mental conditions before? Such as depression, anxiety, things like that.”

“I had a therapist who told me I was depressed,” Clint tells her, more cautious than he’d like. “But my handler found out about it and I got less field work. So I don’t like being diagnosed.”

Eliza nods and then smiles gently at him. “Completely understandable.” She puts her pen and clipboard on the desk next to her and uncrosses and then recrosses her legs, sets her right hand on top of her prosthetic and meets his gaze. “Clint, what do you want to get out of this? I know this is mandated therapy, but you should have a goal beyond just doing it to get back out in the field. This is for you, after all, not anyone else.”

He doesn’t really know what to say. He tries, a few times, and she waits patiently.

“You can think about it if you want,” Eliza finally tells him.

Clint searches her face, looking for any trace of judgement, and he doesn’t see it. It makes him relax a bit, enough to say, “I just want to know why.”

“Why what?”

“Why Loki chose me. Why he did all that.” He picks at a loose thread on his jeans. “I can’t sleep sometimes because of it.”

Eliza nods and her eyes glance to the clock on the wall behind him, and Clint pushes to his feet before she can say anything. She stands up as well, holds out her hand for him to shake, which he does. “I’ll see you on Thursday?” she questions.

Clint drops her hand, slides his hands into his pockets, nods. Twice a week for the next five weeks. He can do that. “See you then,” he says with a grin, and she opens the door for him, watches him as he walks down the short hall to the exit, and Clint gives a jaunty wave over his shoulder as he shuts the door behind him.

* * *

Eliza doesn’t have the clipboard in her lap this time, but it's on the desk right next to her, and she picks it up when she wants to write something in it, which is almost kind of worse. She asks about what he did over the past couple days, but he didn’t really do anything. He’s all caught up on paperwork, can’t go on any missions, so he’s just been lazing around his apartment and going on walks and sending memes to the other Avengers. It’s super surreal to have Captain America’s cell phone number and doubly surreal to watch the guy try to figure out memes and modern jokes.

She gets right down to business, which is kind of a relief. “You told me last time you wanted to talk about Loki.”

Clint sighs. “Yeah. Loki. He came through the portal and stuck his Scepter in my chest and brainwashed me. I was basically his right hand man for about two weeks, give or take.” Here, he pauses. He can’t really even admit it to himself, much less out loud to someone who is still pretty much a stranger. He pulls out one of his hearing aids and rubs at his ear for a couple seconds before putting it back in. “I’ve done a lot of missions for SHIELD, Doc. A lot. I haven’t kept track of the numbers for a long time. I’ve done things I regret and things I’m proud of. I’ve worked by myself and with partners. I’ve kinda done it all, honestly. I’m one of SHIELD’s top agents for a reason. But I…” Here, he leans forward, rubs his hands over his face, slots his elbows on top of his knees. “When Loki had me, I felt useful. I felt like I was doing good.”

He glances at her and to his surprise, she doesn’t pick up the clipboard. “Just doing good?” she clarifies.

“I felt like I was good,” Clint tells her, and he knows what she’s getting from that. He has an inferiority complex a mile wide and it’s pretty obvious to anyone who talks to him. He’s good at a few things and pretty much garbage at everything else, and he knows it. “I _was_ good. I fucking _blossomed_. He gave me a job that he knew I was good at and I did it. I did everything he wanted and more.”

He stops there.

He can’t say it, but he’s pretty sure she knows. She can probably smell it on him.

“How much of it do you remember?”

“All of it. Every second of it. There’s nothing else in my life I remember that clearly.”

“How much of it are you willing to tell me about?”

He looks away from her, looks up at the plant with the trailing vines, over her diplomas, the window that doesn’t show anything other than the sky and the clouds. He knows what she wants to hear, but he can’t. It’s _private_. It’s not like Loki told him not to tell or anything like that, it’s just...it’s just for him.

He grimaces, looks away from her. He’s not even entirely sure Loki would even care if he told. After all, Loki had told him before he let himself be captured that he’d come back for Clint after it was all over, and Clint hasn’t seen hide nor hair of him. Maybe it hasn’t been long enough, or maybe Loki has been watching him, judging him, and he’s deemed Clint not worthy enough.

He stops himself from thinking any further.

Eliza opens the drawer again and gets another bottled water for him, and Clint takes it gratefully. He checks the seal again and then opens it, takes a drink while he tries to settle his thoughts. It doesn’t work.

“What scares you so much about talking about him?” she asks and Clint almost spits out his water.

“Cutting right to it, eh, Doc?” he asks.

She just smiles at him. “You like to talk around the problem, Clint. I’ve only known you for an hour and change and I know that already. I think it works with most people but I’ve worked with a lot of men like you and I know how it works.”

He just realized; he never asked her what her specialty is. He never asked why SHIELD picked her specifically. So he asks.

“I worked with prisoners of war,” Eliza tells him simply. Clint stiffens immediately. “And I specialized in victims of Stockholm Syndrome and brainwashing. I also worked with men who experienced severe trauma and abuse in their childhoods.”

He doesn’t really know what to say to that.

“I am here for you, Clint,” Eliza tells him. “SHIELD hired me on as a consultant specifically for you, for as long or as short as you need. If there’s anyone on Earth that can help you come to terms with what you experienced, it’s me. I promise.”

He resists the urge to run.

“What do you think happened to me?” he asks, voice hoarse. “Why do you think I miss him so much?”

She shifts in her seat slightly, gives him a searching look. “How about this?” she offers up finally. “You ask me that question at our tenth session, and I’ll give you an answer.”

He nods, accepts that, takes another drink of water. Later, when it’s over, when it’s happened, he’ll realize that was the first moment something was off. 

But for now, he just believes her and watches as she picks up her clipboard and pen and reads something on it. “Let’s start at the beginning again,” she tells him. “You said you and your brother ran away from your foster home and went to the circus.”

“Yeah,” he says. “There was a guy there named the Swordsman. He taught us how to throw knives and taught Barney how to swallow swords. And there was another guy named Trick Shot who taught us how to use a bow. I kinda realized my life calling the second a bow was in my hands. Barney was good at it but I was always better. It kinda pissed him off, I think. He didn’t like being shown up by his little brother.”

“What happened?” Eliza asks gently, writing something down.

“Barney got involved in an embezzlement scheme where Trick Shot and Swordsman were stealing from the circus. I tried to get him to leave it, but he refused. So I left the circus and started making my way as a mercenary, I guess. Archer-for-hire. SHIELD found me a few years after that.” He looks down at the carpet. “Coulson brought me in. Told me I’d work for them or I’d go to jail.”

“So you went to work for SHIELD under duress.”

It’s not a question. Clint blinks a few times, glances at her. He never thought about it like that. “I told Coulson I’d just break out, go back to work however I wanted, but I guess. Yeah, it was either jail or SHIELD.”

“No wonder you don’t trust them,” she notes, and taps her pen against her clipboard once, then seems to realize she’s doing it and stops. “How many agents are brought into the agency in a similar manner?”

Clint snorts. “God, none, I’d hope. I kinda convinced Natasha to join, but she only joined because I asked and because she said she wanted to finally do some good.” He shifts uncomfortably, pulls at the collar of his shirt. “They sent me to take her out. I made a different decision.”

“Is that common?”

“Defying my superiors? Yeah.”

She smiles and Clint ducks his chin. “I’m not surprised. But I meant ‘taking someone out’. Is that common?”

“I mean...I guess?” He’s never really thought about it before. “SHIELD likes using me for that kind of stuff because I never argued.”

For some reason, that makes her take pause. She even blinks a few times. She writes something down, but her pen moves slowly, as if she’s unsure. “Why did you never argue?”

“It never really occurred to me I could. It was just my job, you know?”

She nods and for some reason it makes Clint nervous. “So, let me get this straight. A government organization manipulated you into working for them and then ordered you to kill operatives that opposed or otherwise went against their mission and ideals. Regularly. More than once.”

Once, Clint saw the file for an assassin called the Winter Soldier. It was mostly conjecture, connecting various assassinations throughout the decades, connecting them all to one shadowy man who worked to further some shadowy organization’s interests. He’d read the file, shrugged a bit, and gone on with his life.

Now, he wonders if he was kind of SHIELD’s version of the Winter Soldier.

Going by Eliza’s face, she’s thinking something similar. She shakes her head. “You sure you’re here to talk about Loki?”

Clint gives her a sheepish grin. “That’s what SHIELD told me to do,” he says.

She nods, smiles back, but it looks a little forced. “Alright,” she says. “Have you ever thought about leaving SHIELD?”

He opens and closes his mouth a few times. Finally, he turns his attention to the window, takes comfort in the blue sky and the wispy clouds. “I...not until Loki. Once he left me, I thought I couldn’t do it anymore.”

She doesn’t mention the slip of the tongue. “Can you leave?”

“I think so.” He thinks about it, looks across the small office at the way she’s holding her pen, at her prosthetic hand resting on her clipboard, and he suddenly comes to a decision. “I’m going to.”

Eliza smiles at him.


	2. we'll give the hero three times three

It’s strange to him that Eliza is more interested in what Clint does outside of being a SHIELD agent and an Avenger than she is of those things. Most people only care about SHIELD agent Clint Barton or Hawkeye.

He doesn’t tell her that. He doesn’t tell her that it feels like she’s the only other person than Loki to ever care about that.

This is their fifth session. Clint finds himself looking forward to them. Eliza hasn’t asked if he’s going to keep seeing her after his mandated sessions are finished, but he thinks he might.

He’s been thinking about Loki the past few days. More so than usual, anyway. He tells himself he doesn’t like to think about Loki and then goes back to his apartment and sits on the couch and watches _Dog Cops_ and drinks beer and eats pizza and thinks about Loki. He’s a hypocrite and he knows it.

She wants to know about Natasha, which isn’t surprising. Everyone always wants to know about Natasha. “She’s my better half,” Clint tells her with a smile. “She’s smarter, faster, better looking. They sent me to kill her and I made a different decision.”

“Why?”

He’s been asked that before. Usually he makes a joke— _Could you blame me? She’s hot!_ —but he genuinely wants to answer her as well as he can. So it takes him a minute. “That wasn’t the first time I was sent after her,” Clint says finally. Eliza looks surprised for a moment before she schools her face back to calm consideration. “They sent me on a couple recon missions. Just getting information. Nat was an assassin, you know. Trained by the best. She could infiltrate just about any organization and kill her target and no one would be the wiser. She even infiltrated Stark Industries twice, you know. Tony had no idea until she let him find out. But I got more information on her than anyone else they sent after her, and they finally decided she was too big of a risk to keep alive. So they sent me after her.

“I think she knew the second I arrived at the warehouse that it wasn’t going to end well. I’m well known in some circles and the circles Nat was running in at that time, I was _really_ well known. So she knew what to expect, and she was waiting for me. I think they wanted me to kill her in some big fight so I could give them information on her fighting styles and her weak points, so they could use that against other assassins that were trained in the same way she was. But I walked in there, and she was just sitting, waiting for me. I knew a lot about her, knew how dangerous she was, and she knew just as much about me.”

Clint glances at her, wonders if she knows how much blood he has on his hands, wonders if she knows how dangerous he is, wonders if she feels unsafe now.

He continues, “So I sat down across the table, because I didn’t really know what else to do. I didn’t want to fight an unarmed person, and she’d put all her knives and weapons out on the table. So I did the same. I’m still pretty dangerous even without a weapon.”

At that, she does smile, just a slight curl of her lips. “I have no doubt of that,” she says, and she’s almost...she almost sounds fond.

Clint just smiles a bit and continues, “So we’re just sitting there, looking at each other, and I finally say, ‘They want me to kill you,’ and she just nods. Then she looks at the table and all her weapons and I kind of think, ‘Do you want me to? Is that why you’re not fighting?’ So, I decide right then and there that I won’t kill her unless she comes at me first.”

“What did she say?”

“She said that they wanted her to kill me too. I think _they_ were the KGB or the Red Room, but whoever it was, they’d sent her on the same mission that I’d been sent on. Nat told me later that she’d been sent on the same recon missions to watch me.”

“Were you aware of her when she was watching you?”

Clint thinks about it. “I saw her once,” he finally says. “Nat’s kind of a chameleon. She can change her appearance to really suit any situation. She’s always been better at it than I have. Better than anyone, really.”

“What specifically made you make the decision to spare her life?”

“I think it was that she was resigned to it. She hadn’t given up—I don’t think Nat _can_ give up—but she thought it was just eventual, that her time had come. She was going to fight it, of course, and she’d fight to the last breath, but she didn’t think she was going to walk out of there.”

“Did you want to prove her wrong?”

Clint looks at her. Eliza is holding her clipboard in her lap, one leg crossed over the other, her pen in her right hand. She hasn’t written anything this session, but she’s clearly ready for it. The last two sessions she hasn’t had the clipboard out at all, so Clint isn’t entirely certain what’s different this time, but it’s probably nothing.

“I wanted to give her hope again,” Clint admits, and his voice is quiet. “I know what it’s like to live without it. So I told her I’d vouch for her at SHIELD, that at least Coulson would listen to me.”

“Did he?”

“Oh, yeah. He wasn’t too excited, and Nat had to go through a lot of testing and all that to make sure she was loyal, but after they saw what she was capable of, SHIELD was grateful.”

“Do you think that was their goal all along?”

Clint snorts. “God, no. They wanted her dead and in the ground. Recruitment isn’t important when it comes to enemy operatives. They just want the risk gone.”

Eliza writes something down. For the first time, she’s the one who’s silent. When she looks back up at him, Clint realizes for the first time that her eyes are green. He wonders why he didn’t notice before. “What, exactly, is your relationship with Natasha?”

“She’s my best friend and my partner,” Clint replies firmly, and he wants to bare his teeth and turn away, but he stops himself. “I love her.”

“Have you had sex with her?”

This time, he does turn away. He twists around to face the window, rubs a hand over his face, twists the other one in the fabric of the couch. He wants to ask why the fuck it even matters, why everyone always thinks sex has to be what makes a relationship important, but he finally says, “No. And I never wanted to.” Before she can ask why, he continues, “It’s not like that. I’d lay down my life for her in a second but it’s not like that. She’s beautiful, sure, but I’m not attracted to her.”

Eliza smiles. “There’s nothing wrong with that. Now, we’re out of time for today.” She puts her clipboard on the desk, stands up, and Clint stands up as well after checking the clock. “Next week?”

“Yep,” Clint says, and she opens the door for him, watches as he leaves.

* * *

“What is it, precisely, about the bow and arrow that attracts you so?”

Clint sighs, runs a hand through his hair. He brought a coffee today, and he sips at it. He didn’t sleep well last night, and she can probably tell. But everyone always asks this question. Why a bow and arrow when he can use a gun? Why use such an archaic weapon? Again, why not a _gun?_

“Usually I tell people because a bow and arrow are more intimate. A bullet is kind of like a generic email you get. An arrow is a handwritten thank you card with a spritz of perfume and a lipstick kiss.”

He can tell she wasn’t expecting that. For some reason, it actually makes her a little uncomfortable. 

Again, in retrospect, he’ll hit himself over the head. 

But she rights herself quickly and nods. “That’s what you usually tell people,” she presses, and Clint sighs. 

“When I was a kid, before dad died, before he drove that car off the road, I used to feel like I was missing something. We lived out in the country, a ways outside of town, and my dad would butcher animals for folks, even did a bit of taxidermy on the side. I never got old enough to help. But anyway, I used to go on walks. Long ones. I’d be gone all day. I was looking for something. When Buck—that’s Trick Shot’s real name—put that first bow into my hands, I finally realized what it was I was missing. It felt like I’d found part of me. I just haven’t found a reason to put it down.”

She looks a bit stunned. She looks down at her prosthetic hand, sets her right hand on top of it. Clint wonders what happened, how she lost it, why she has a prosthetic at all. “Are you looking for one?”

Unbidden, his thoughts turn to Loki. 

He wonders if he would put his bow down if Loki asked. 

“No,” he says finally, and he’s not entirely sure if it’s a lie or not, or what question he’s really answering. His free hand flexes on his thigh and her eyes dart to it and then away. “I don’t think I am.”

* * *

At their ninth session, he asks, “If I wanted to give my resignation letter to Coulson, would you help me?” Then he asks, “If I leave SHIELD, are you still going to be my therapist?”

“Of course,” she replies, and then she smiles and says, “I don’t come cheap.”

“Neither do I,” Clint retorts back with a wink. “I’m an Avenger now. I can probably get Tony Stark to pay for my therapy if I play him right.”

Her brows draw together. They’re well sculpted. She takes care of her physical appearance, puts a lot of effort into looking a specific way, into being interpreted in a specific fashion. He wonders if she would be offended that she kind of reminds him of Loki in that they both try very hard to be thought of in a certain way, and then he thinks that she knows that he basically worships the god and would probably be a bit flattered. 

“How well do you know Tony Stark?”

“I mean, well enough, I guess. Better than the average person. Well enough that I called him once to help me fix my DVD player and he came.”

“You said last session he offered you a floor in Avengers Tower.”

Clint nods and sighs, wishes he hadn’t been running late and could’ve gotten a coffee on the way in. Eliza reaches into the drawer next to her and hands over a bottled water. Clint checks the seal, opens the cap, takes a sip. “Yeah,” he says, fiddles with the cap, rolls it between his fingers. It’s flimsy plastic but he’s quick enough to make it work. When he looks back at her, she’s watching his hands. “I’m not sure if I’ll take it. I do kinda want to see Cap shirtless though, and I’m pretty sure that’s the only way I’ll get that.”

He watches her carefully for her reaction, but she just chuckles. “I can’t blame you,” she replies, meets his gaze. “He is a very attractive man.”

Sometimes…sometimes she says things in a way that catches Clint’s attention, make him take pause. But this time, he just grins. “It’s Captain America. Can you really blame me? Maybe Tony’ll put me on the same floor as him.”

He gives her a saucy wink and she laughs. 

“What do you want your resignation letter to say?” Eliza asks, and she picks up her clipboard and pen and looks like an eager student ready to begin a lesson. 

He blows out a breath. “Sorry would probably be the first thing. It’s Coulson, after all.”

That gives her pause and she looks up from writing something down. “Who exactly is Coulson to you?”

“Well, he’s my handler, so he’s kind of my boss and kind of my friend and kind of a de facto therapist. He recruited me, remember? He’s known me longer than almost anyone.” He looks at her and then looks away, up at the plant with the trailing vines. “He kind of had faith in me when no one else did. I wasn’t making much of myself when he found me. Everyone else thought I was trash or whatever, but Coulson trusted me.” He lifts his chin. “Now I’m an Avenger.”

“Because of Coulson?”

He shrugs one shoulder. “I mean, I guess you could say that.”

“Because he manipulated you into joining a covert government agency that meant you would have to live your life in secrecy and kill people if that government agency disagreed with their ideology or what they were doing.” It’s not a question. It’s a statement of fact. 

He frowns at her. He realizes he’s been underestimating her. He saw her as a therapist, as someone solely there to help him, and maybe he’s wrong. “Why are you trying to get me to leave SHIELD?” he asks, and he sits up straight. He already knows how to immobilize her or even kill her if he needs to. He’s faster than she is, and he can have her flat on her back if she pulls out a gun or a knife. He can go out the window or the door, and, hell, he can even push through the ceiling and figure out a way out from there. 

“I apologize if I came across that way,” she says, sounding a bit rueful, and Clint gives her a curious, wary glance, but he slowly relaxes back into the couch. “I care about you, Clint, and from what you’ve told me about SHIELD, it’s not a healthy environment for you.”

He nods, slowly. He glances at the window again. “I don’t think you’re wrong,” he says finally, and sighs. “I guess it’s just habit. But I’ll probably tell Coulson I just want to be a full time Avenger.”

“Will he accept that?”

“Doubt he’ll have a choice. Land of the free and all.”

For some reason, that reference seems to completely baffle her, but she doesn’t say anything. She just nods. “What do you think being an Avenger full time will entail?”

“Probably a lot less missions and assignments,” Clint says after thinking about it for a minute. “They’re definitely not as busy as a SHIELD agent. But they do have to deal with the public more, and I know Cap makes them do charity stuff, like hospitals and all that.”

“What do you think about that? About being in the public eye?”

His eyes go to her diplomas. She obviously knows where he’s looking. 

“What are you insecure about?” she asks. 

“Wow,” he mutters, mostly as a way to deflect, “Way to just hit the nail on the head.” He sighs, trying not to be irritated at Eliza just doing her job. “I never finished middle school. I wasn’t even good at school anyway. But once I’m out there, they’re going to know.”

“How so?”

“Reporters,” he replies with a shrug. “One of them will find out eventually. Or I’ll let something slip and they’ll figure it out. And I’m...do you know how smart all of them are? Tony Stark and Bruce Banner are, like, the two smartest guys in the whole world. Steve is _Captain America_ , Natasha is brilliant, and Thor is from another planet.”

Her nostrils flare at the mention of Thor. Clint thinks that might be the first time he’s ever even said the guy’s name in here. 

“Look,” he implores, “I’m good at what I do. I’m really fuckin’ good at it. I don’t miss. I’ve put thousands and thousands of hours into being very, very good at it. I do the calculations and all that that’s necessary to hit a target, to hit _any_ target, in the blink of an eye. It’s not easy, but it’s worth it. But outside of that, who am I?” He looks away from her. There’s more cloud than sky out the window today. “People put up with Clint Barton because they get Hawkeye outta the deal. SHIELD put up with me because I didn’t complain about the shitty missions they sent me on. Are the Avengers going to do the same thing? Are they going to—”

The phone on her desk rings. 

Clint’s eyes fly to it and then they fly back to her, and Eliza sets down her clipboard on her chair and primly gets up to answer the phone. 

Clint’s a curious kind of guy. He likes knowing things. He doesn’t read much—he sees better from far away, and words sometimes get scrambled up for him, so it’s not worth the effort a lot of the time—but he likes to listen to audiobooks and things like that. Yeah, it’s funny, a deaf guy listening to audiobooks. A deaf guy that can barely read. 

Because he’s curious, he glances at Eliza’s back and leans forward to catch a peek of what she’s been writing. The entire page is full of blue ink, but to Clint’s surprise, it’s not in English. It’s not in any language he’s ever seen. He frowns, straightens back up, and doesn’t really know what to think about it. 

It almost looks like runes. 

She ends the call, sits back down, glances over her notes like they’re legible at all, and then gives him a small smile. Maybe it’s shorthand or something?

“Everything alright?” he asks.

“It’s fine,” Eliza tells him. “It’s all fine. Now, where were we?”

“My insecurity issues with joining the Avengers full time,” Clint mutters under his breath, more embarrassed than not about it. She writes something down. Maybe she’s writing in a secret therapist code or something. She did work with POWs after all, maybe she developed some kind of code to keep their information safe. “I’m just some guy, you know?”

“Are you?”

“Who the hell else am I if not just _some guy?_ ” he barks, and then winces and looks away from her. 

Eliza taps her pen on her clipboard. “From what I can tell, Clint, you are far more than you’re letting on.” Her eyes narrow and Clint narrows his in return, tries to ready himself for whatever she’s going to say. “For all the harm Loki did to you and to Earth, you still hold him in very high regard.”

Slowly, and because he’s spent nine hours in this room so far and he intends to spend more, he nods.

“You were, and still are, a very trusted and highly sought after agent within a highly secretive and competitive organization. Your handlers and bosses sent you on missions that they did not believe anyone else could complete, and you always came back successful.” She lets out a small sigh. “Clint, I am world renowned. I am _very_ expensive. SHIELD found me and paid me a year's salary for ten hours of therapy with you. Do you think SHIELD would do that for _just some guy?_ " Clint blinks at her. "Now, Loki surely knew about all that. He was in Selvig’s mind, yes?” He nods again. “Loki needed a general, a right hand man. Do you really think that Loki would’ve chosen _just some guy_ to do that for him?”

“No,” he says, voice hoarse and quiet. “He wanted someone he could trust.”

She nods once, firmly. “That’s right. He wanted someone who he knew would get the job done, would get _any_ job done. And that’s what you did, right?”

“I did it because he asked.”

“He asked because he knew you could do it.”

‘How do you know?’ he wants to ask. He wants to scream it, more like. Half of all he’s done since Loki is pretend that he was just some unfortunate casualty of war, that Loki glanced around the room and he was closest and that’s why he got picked. He doesn’t know how to deal with being chosen on purpose and _still_ being left behind. 

He looks away from her. “Did I ever tell you what he said to me? Right before he used the Scepter on me.”

“No, Clint, you haven’t.”

“He said, ‘You have heart.’”

She writes something down. “What do you think he meant by that?”

He lets out a dry chuckle. “I think it meant that he knew that I’d care about him whether I liked it or not, and that I’m courageous and stupid enough to keep caring about him even though I’m not being mind controlled any more and that I always follow my heart and not my head and that’s how I got into this mess in the first place.” He takes in a deep breath, risks looking at her. 

For some reason, she’s smiling at him. “Thank you,” she says, “for telling me that.”

She looks at the clock and so does he. She sighs reluctantly and pushes to her feet and so does he. “Thursday?” she asks, and Clint nods. 

She opens the door for him and watches him leave.

* * *

He brings a coffee for their last session. Eliza smiles at him. She has a mug of her own, which Clint thinks is kind of funny. They both take their seats as she says, “You’re my only patient today. As long as we’re on SHIELD’s dime, we’re going to talk for as long as you need.”

He nods.

“Today, we’re going to talk about Loki. No jumping to other topics, no tangents that try to distract me from him, no putting on the mask of suave Avenger, no flirting, nothing other than Loki. Agree?”

He nods again.

“Good. Now, there’s something I’d like clarified. In our first session, you told me that Loki brainwashing you saved your life.”

He grimaces. “I wasn’t suicidal,” he tells her. “I know what that’s like.” At her questioning look, he elaborates, “I had a rough go of it when I was 15 or 16 or so. Barely made it through that year. But anyway, I know what being suicidal is like. I wasn’t that. I was just...I was tired. Worn out. I’d taken some vacation time and I came back to see that some alien from another planet is trying to invade the planet.” He pauses, tries to gather his thoughts. “I talked to therapists right after New York, you know. You’re my, like, fifth or sixth go.”

She nods. “That’s what they told me. I’m glad to help, Clint.”

“Thanks,” he mutters. “Anyway, I think I’d kind of lost my purpose in life.”

“And Loki gave it back?” she asks, and when Clint agrees with her, there’s a small smile on her lips, but he doesn’t think anything of it, not right then. “So, what exactly were your duties under Loki? What did he ask you to do?”

Clint looks at her, remembers last time how he realized he underestimated her, and then he says, “He wanted someone who could do his dirty work. He wanted someone he trusted. That’s why he used the Scepter on me.”

She writes something down. “Would you have done what he wanted without the use of the Scepter?”

His immediate response is, “No!” but then he stops and thinks about it. He genuinely considers it. He tries to think of the man he was before Loki came to Earth, remembers that Coulson sent him to keep an eye on Mjolnir, remembers the missions SHIELD sent him on, thinks about how _tired_ he’d been, about how he went home after work and didn’t take care of himself at all and didn’t want to wake up in the morning. “No,” he says again, more sure of it. “If he’d come to Earth a decade ago, he wouldn’t have needed it. But I worked for SHIELD for too long to compromise them like that.” He pauses again, considers it again. "Maybe if he'd just talked to me?" Then he shakes his head. "No, I wouldn't have."

She doesn’t look surprised or doesn’t look like he said anything she wasn’t expecting. “That makes sense,” she tells him. “How was his mind control released?” Before he answers, she holds up a hand. “As I told you, I’ve worked with POWs, victims of kidnapping and long captivity, and people who experienced Stockholm Syndrome. I’ve worked with people who were, for all intents and purposes, mind controlled and brainwashed. But it doesn’t get removed by a knock to the head. Especially the type you’re telling me about.”

Clint looks at her, slides his hands down his thighs, cups his knees in his palms. “He sent me to take down the Helicarrier.”

“By yourself?”

He nods. She writes something down.

“I mean, I had mercenaries to help, but it was all me. He told me that if I saw Natasha, I was to kill her. No ifs, ands, or buts about it. If I saw her, kill her. I think SHIELD told her the same for me.”

Eliza sits back in her seat, recrosses her legs. Clint glances down at her lap and notices that her prosthetic is a different one than the ones she was wearing at their previous sessions. “So, as you’ve told me, Natasha is your best friend. Does she regard you the same?”

He doesn’t even have to think about it. He just nods. “She told me once that she never thought she’d meet someone like me, that the Red Room had taken that hope away from her. I brought it back. I think if anyone in the world can call themselves Nat’s friend, it’s me.”

She nods, taps her pen on the clipboard. She has nice fingers, Clint notices. Kinda similar to—

“Both of your respective bosses knew this and intentionally told you to kill the most important person in your life.”

Clint sits back and thinks about that. 

“Loki was evil, yes, but SHIELD—”

“Whoa, Doc!” Clint cuts her off. “Look, the guy wasn’t perfect, and he did brainwash me, but he’s not _evil_. I spent two weeks with him. Someone was controlling him, making him invade Earth. He barely slept, but the couple times he did, he had me sit in the room and keep watch. He used to have nightmares where he’d...he wouldn’t scream. I think he was hurt to the point where he couldn’t scream anymore. But he’s not evil. Misguided, full of weird morals? Sure. But not evil.”

She smiles thinly at him, writes something down. “Okay, Clint, I won’t call him evil anymore. Now, back to my point. SHIELD was an organization both you and Natasha trusted. You both dedicated your lives to this agency. Now, why on Earth would they send your closest friend to kill you?”

“Because no one else could,” Clint replies after considering it. “She’s the only one good enough.”

“Is that true? Could they not just use a sniper to shoot you? Put some poison in your food? Any other way than send your closest friend to end your life? What, exactly, does that say about SHIELD?”

“Loki sent me to kill her too.”

“Was that his express purpose or a situation he planned for?”

“I don’t think a damn thing that happened in those two weeks was anything Loki didn’t plan for,” he tells her, as simply as possible. “I think Loki sent me after her because he knew I’d kill her if he asked, or I’d die in the process. And he wanted to hurt her.”

“Why is that?”

He knows the answer. He just doesn’t want to say it. He decides, instead, to say, “I need to go to the bathroom,” and he stands up. 

She nods. “Just down the hall,” she tells him, and Clint does his best not to run out of the room. He makes it to the bathroom and washes his hands and avoids looking at himself in the mirror. 

He knows why Loki wanted Nat dead. Not just because she’s a fuckin’ deadly warrior, not because she’s an accomplished spy, not just because she’s the Black Widow and she tricked Loki when few people in his life had ever accomplished that. He knows exactly why and he doesn’t...he doesn’t like thinking about it.

He uses the toilet, washes his hands again, and finally looks at himself in the mirror. He looks tired, and he is. He looks worn out, and he is.

He doesn’t look like someone Loki would be jealous over. He just _doesn’t_. He looks like some guy who isn’t much more than his reflection. He curls his hands into fists, flexes his arms, wonders if he should cut his hair.

He goes back to Eliza’s office, sits back down on the couch. There’s a bottle of water waiting for him and his empty coffee cup is gone. He picks the water up and looks at it while he says, “Loki was jealous that I cared so much about Nat. He stuck his hands in my brain and looked at everything that makes me _me_ and decided that he should take away everything important to me.”

“And Nat is important to you?”

“Yeah,” Clint nods, and he glances up at her. “Like I said, she’s my best friend. If there was anyone for him to be jealous over, it’d be her.”

“Why exactly do you think he was jealous?” She pauses, picks up her mug of tea, and takes a sip. As she sets the mug down, she asks, “Did he tell you anything before you went to take down the Helicarrier? Anything you haven’t told anyone else?”

“He was jealous because he’d never had anyone that was his before. He was jealous because of how much I knew about her. He made me tell him everything I knew about her. It took me hours.” It falls out of Clint’s mouth in a rush. “He had other people under control of the Scepter, but he turned them all into automatons. Even Selvig wasn’t himself. But all he did with me was tweak enough that my loyalty turned to him instead of SHIELD.” She nods and Clint tries to gather up the courage to answer her next questions.

It takes him a few minutes. He looks at the clock behind her and watches as two minutes of long, agonizing silence pass.

“Yes. He did tell me some things.”

He looks down at the water bottle and fiddles with the label. He goes to unscrew the cap and realizes the seal has already been broken. Maybe she accidentally gave him an already opened bottle, but instead of sipping it, he puts it aside.

“Will you tell me what he told you?” When he doesn’t answer, she offers, “How about just one thing, Clint?”

For the first time, he thinks about leaving. He thinks about doing anything other than answering that question, no matter what. What Loki had told them was just for _him_ , not for anyone else. It’s precious, almost. It’s more than a secret. He could tell Eliza secrets. But he can’t say any of this.

“You don’t have to answer if you don’t want,” she soothes. Clint nods. “Let’s go back to something else. I told you that at our last session, I’d answer a question for you. Do you remember what it is?”

“Why do I miss him so much?”

She nods. “I think that’s the question you want answered most. I think that you believe if you know why, you can begin to get over him.”

“Isn’t that how it works?”

“In most situations, I would say yes. But you’re unique, Clint. You’ve experienced something that almost no one else on Earth has gone through. You have a bond with Loki that is probably never going to go away, and I think you know that.”

He looks at her, looks at her long fingers, her green eyes, and he nods. “He knew that they were going to try to get the mind control out of me,” he says in nothing more than a whisper. “He told me to act like it was gone, no matter what they did, and that he’d come back for me.”

“Do you think he’s going to come back?”

“Shouldn’t you be telling me that I shouldn’t _want_ him to come back? That I’m sick or something for missing him?” he shoots at her, pissed off about it. He wants some water but doesn’t trust that bottle, so he just glares at her.

Eliza stays calm. She merely blinks at him. “I can tell you that, Clint, and you’ll just argue with me. If you don’t accept your feelings, you can’t work through them. You can’t tell me that you miss the god who brainwashed you without confronting _why_ you miss him, and what you want to happen now.”

That makes sense, Clint guesses. “He said he was going to come back,” he tells her, and he feels like he’s standing on the edge of a precipice, like a small breeze is going to push him over the edge. 

“Is the mind control gone, Clint?” Her voice is soft, softer than Clint’s ever heard it. She sounds no more than curious, as if it’s the same as any other question she’s asked him. “Did Natasha really knock it out you or did you just pretend?”

Clint feels like his mind is going to break, like he’s going to split in two. He doesn’t _know._

“Take a moment,” Eliza tells him, soothingly. “Drink some water.”

He picks up the water, almost robotically, and goes to unscrew the cap, but the moment before he does, he remembers the seal was broken.

“Oh,” he says out loud, and when he turns his head to look at her, she’s not Eliza anymore.


	3. the laurel wreath is ready now to place upon his loyal brow

Loki picks up the prosthetic hand and looks at it, almost amused by it. “You didn’t answer my question,” Loki tells him, and Clint shivers. He doesn’t know if he wants to run or fall to his knees. Loki sets the prosthetic on the desk and turns his full attention to Clint, those green eyes boring into him like two blades.

“No,” Clint tells him. “It’s not gone. It never was. She knocked it loose enough I was able to act like it was gone.”

Loki smiles smugly, leans back into his chair, and Clint manages to tear his eyes away from him long enough to glance around the office. “Was it you the whole time?”

“Of course it was, Barton. You really think I’d let some stranger hear your innermost thoughts?”

No, of course not. He’s not entirely sure why he would’ve expected anything else. He nods, slowly, and his eyes land on the prosthetic hand. “Is she real? Is she okay?”

“Did I do anything to her?” Loki finishes. “No, of course not, Barton. Elizabeth Salem is off in some other country or something, saving people over there.” He smirks. “I had to find a way in.”

Clint looks down at his hands. Even though Loki already knows everything, knows _everything_ about him, he feels betrayed, as if Eliza had been there the entire time and knew what was going to happen. He sighs. “You know that’s a shitty thing to do, right? Pretend to be someone’s therapist just to learn shit about them?”

“Oh, there’s no fun in doing the right thing,” Loki says, dismissively. He even waves a hand; Clint’s eyes catch on his long fingers. Then, Loki smiles. “You know, you never told her one thing. You never told her how you _begged._ ”

Clint throws the water bottle in one direction and lunges at the other. He manages to pull the knife out of his boot sheath and stabs it as close to Loki as he can manage, but then that same long-fingered hand is on his shoulder, holding him back. They’re both on their feet and Clint is shaking, absolutely vibrating with the need to do _something_. Loki looks down at him, looks down his nose, and the hand on Clint’s shoulder shifts just enough that his fingers brush Clint’s neck.

Oh.

_Oh._

“You could’ve broken the mind control,” Loki tells him, and his voice is just a shadow, and all Clint can see are his green eyes and his smile. “At any point, you could’ve freed yourself. Instead, you liked it, didn’t you, Clint?”

Clint stabs him, right in the side, sinks the blade up to the handle.

Loki just tuts at him, brings up his other hand to cover Clint’s hand. “Well?” he asks, and he sounds a little mean, which Clint understands, since he did just stab him and all. “What are you going to do now, Agent Barton?”

“You haven’t called me that for five weeks,” Clint grits out, and digs the knife in deeper. “You pretended to be a therapist and sat there and watched me fall apart because you left me. You fucking _asshole._ ”

“Yes, well,” Loki says with a shrug, “we’re not all perfect. Now, either kill me or pull the knife out.” When Clint doesn’t do anything, Loki gives out an exasperated sigh. “Clint. Make a decision.”

“I can’t.”

“Oh, don’t give me that. I know exactly what you’re capable of. Now, make a decision.”

“What was in the water? I know there was something.”

“A potion to reduce your defenses, essentially. I knew during the first meeting that you wouldn’t tell her as much as I wanted to know. You came in early today; I didn’t have time to fix the bottle cap. I didn’t realize you would notice. My clever boy.” His hand slides up Clint’s neck and then curls into his hair. Clint wonders if Loki can feel the way his knees tremble. “Pull the knife out, Clint. If you wanted to kill me, you would have done it already.”

He nods, annoyed that he's thankful for the order, and does as he’s told. He shifts his grip on the knife, feels Loki’s blood wet his fingers, and drags the knife out slowly and carefully. He drops it to the floor and then his bloody hand curls in Loki’s shirt. Good thing the god is wearing all black. A flick of magic and the pain eases out of Loki’s face.

“Good,” Loki murmurs, and his hand moves to curl around the back of Clint’s neck, his thumb reaching around to tip Clint’s chin up. “I never answered your question satisfactorily, did I?”

“Which one?”

“Why I chose you.”

Clint swallows. Loki’s eyes flicker down to watch his throat work and then back up to his face. “She said— _you_ said it was because you wanted someone of your own.”

Loki’s mouth curls in a smile. “No, Clint, you said that. But I suppose it’s close enough to the truth, isn’t it? Perhaps what you were searching for when you were a child was _me._ ”

That makes him want to stab Loki again, but he doesn’t move. “Egotistical bastard,” he mutters, wants to turn his face away, but Loki doesn’t let him. Loki just chuckles at him. “Was it true? Were you jealous of her?”

Something flashes over Loki’s face, something dark and mean, and Clint has his answer. Loki just says, “Does it matter?” and Clint surges up on his toes to kiss him.

Loki kisses like he fights: mean, underhanded, like he’s going to win. Clint lets him, doesn’t want anything else. Loki’s hand slides down from his neck to his lower back, pulls him closer, and his other hand cradles Clint’s jaw, tilts him exactly how Loki wants him.

When Loki pulls back, Clint considers stabbing him again. He’s fast enough that he could shove Loki back, catch him off guard for a second, pick up the knife again, do his absolute damnedest to slice his gut open and run. Maybe he wouldn’t get far, maybe he wouldn’t even be fast enough to grab the knife, maybe...but he could try.

Instead, Loki asks him, “What did I tell you before I left? Before I sent you to the Helicarrier?”

Clint looks at him, doesn’t look away as the room begins to fade away around them, as Loki gathers his magic to take them away. “That they’re going to take me back, and I would let them. They’ll believe they fixed me, that she knocked the power of the Scepter out of my head, and I’ll tell them they’re right and I won’t try and tell them otherwise. I’ll spend however long and do whatever it takes to regain their trust, and I’ll do it happily. I’ll let them test me, however they want, and I’ll continue to be smarter, faster, and better than they are. If they want to try to use me to replicate the powers of the Scepter, to not help them or let them.” He takes in a deep breath. “You told me to give them only what they ask, not one piece more.”

Loki smiles at him. “You missed something,” he murmurs, looking at Clint like he’s something special, like he’s been searching for him and only just now feels complete again. Clint feels the same way.

“That you’re going to come back for me, no matter what.”

Loki’s smile grows, showing all his teeth, like a shark. “Did you doubt me?”

He wants to say no, but he knows better than to lie to Loki. “Of course I did,” he snorts, and Loki lets him pull back, but keeps him at arm’s length, one hand still on his shoulder. “You _left_ me.”

To his surprise, Loki smiles again, even though it's small and thin. “And I left you and you still didn’t tell them anything. You did everything how you were supposed to.”

With that, Loki waves his hand, and they disappear and reappear in Clint’s apartment. Clint pulls away from him as Loki looks around, faintly disgusted by how Clint’s been living. He knows it looks bad. He knows exactly what Loki is thinking. Loki makes a questioning sound as he looks around, picks up trash, looks at it, sets it back down. He looks at Clint like he’s worried about him, which Clint doesn’t like at all.

Clint moves around, goes into the kitchen, starts the coffee maker. He stares down at it as he listens to Loki move around his apartment. For some reason, it feels more intimate to have Loki in his home than it did to have him in his mind. His ears hurt.

Right as he starts thinking about taking his hearing aids out, Loki steps up behind him, presses fully against him, hands on Clint’s hips. Clint leans back against him, tilts his head so Loki can hook his chin over his shoulder and look at what he’s doing.

“What are you going to do with me?” Clint asks. He wants to take a nap, curl up on the couch, watch _Dog Cops_ , eat pizza and drink beer until he passes out. He also kind of wants to stab Loki again.

“Whatever I want,” Loki says against his jaw, and then he brings up one of his hands to curl around Clint’s neck. Clint lifts his chin so Loki has easier access, fully sags back against him. Loki reaches around him to turn off the coffee maker, and then he pulls Clint’s hearing aids out of his ears, drops them on the counter.

Loki pulls Clint upstairs, pulls him into bed, makes him remember what he begged for, makes him remember who he belongs to.

Afterwards, Clint stares up at the ceiling and he smiles.

* * *

“Still pretty shitty to do that to someone,” Clint reminds Loki the next morning. Loki is experimenting with how he likes his coffee—unsurprisingly, he likes it with a lot of sugar—and he doesn’t look up from his mug as he shrugs.

“Are you surprised? Would you not have been more shocked to realize there was no ulterior motive behind her actions?”

Clint considers that. He made bacon and eggs for both of them, and he eats half a rasher of bacon while he thinks. “Did she really have a prosthetic hand? How’d she lose it?”

“She is missing her left hand, yes, but she usually doesn’t wear anything to hide it.” Green eyes flicker over Clint’s face. “I wanted to see how you would react.”

“Didn’t you already know?”

Loki smiles sharply. “Oh, I had some idea. I didn’t think you’d care, and of course you didn’t. You noticed, processed it, and moved on. It didn’t change your opinion of her at all, and to my surprise, you didn’t ask her how. Of course everyone wants to know the _why_ of someone’s misfortune, don’t they? But you never even considered it.”

“I mean I wondered, but I never would’ve asked,” Clint confirms. “I guess I hear that question too much to ask it of other people.”

Loki nods. “You know, I never asked you how.” He’s sitting to Clint’s left, sitting like the prim bastard like he is, and he reaches out, brushes his fingers over Clint’s ear, taps at his hearing aid. Clint shrugs him off and then Loki’s hand trails down his arm, up over his bare shoulder.

“My dad used to hit us,” Clint says quietly. “Used to box me around the head. Guess he did it one too many times. I lost about 20% hearing, and then later, on a mission for SHIELD, Nat and I got captured. They were keeping us in this room that was surrounded by a magnetic field, and we couldn’t get out. I’m not sure what they were going to do to us. I don’t remember. But I had a sonic arrowhead in my pocket, and it’d gotten damaged when they took us down. I ended up putting it in my mouth and biting down on it.” Loki’s eyes go wide. “It knocked out the magnetic fields long enough for Nat to get the information we needed and to get us out to our extraction point. When I woke up, they told me I could be completely deaf, but they wouldn’t know until my ears healed up. Turns out I’m about 80% deaf, give or take.”

Loki nods, brushes his fingers slowly and purposefully down Clint’s arm. Clint reflexively flexes his muscles and Loki makes a pleased sound. “My little hawk,” Loki murmurs, turning Clint’s hand over and tracing over his palm and his fingers. “Such good eyes and such bad ears.”

“We can’t all be perfect,” Clint teases, and when Loki leans over and kisses him, Clint kisses back. Loki tastes like coffee and bacon and a bit of chocolate. His hand tightens on Clint’s hand, grinds down on his wrist until his bones are grinding together, and Clint gives Loki what he wants: he whimpers into his mouth, pleading and begging, and Loki pulls back, eyes bright and a flush on his cheeks. 

Loki delicately clears his throat and looks away from Clint and takes a sip of his coffee. For the first time, it really hits Clint that Loki came back. Not only did he come back, but Loki came back for _him_. He doesn’t know what’s going to happen next, but he knows that. He sits back in his chair, scratches at his chin. Huh.

“I emailed my resignation letter to Coulson before the session yesterday,” Clint says, and gets up to get his phone out of the drawer he left it in. He turns it on and winces at the dozens of voicemails and texts and emails, drops back down in his seat and starts going through them.

“Oh?” Loki says, watching him through his lashes. When Clint doesn’t say anything, just scrolls through his emails, Loki purses his lips and reaches over and takes from him. “They seem upset.”

“Can you blame them?” Clint snorts, shaking his head. He clears off his plate and gets up to refill it. He stands at the stove and keeps his back to Loki as he asks, “What should I do?”

He hears Loki drop his phone to the table and he fills up his plate and then looks back at him. Loki smiles at him. “Let me take care of it,” Loki tells him, and Clint believes him. He sits back down and his phone starts to ring, but Loki shakes his head, so Clint ignores it.

Loki waits for the call to end and then picks his phone up again. He taps through the screens and then holds it up to his ear.

“Barton,” Loki says, and Clint blinks in astonishment as his own voice comes out of Loki’s mouth, and then he shifts uncomfortably because it’s kind of hot. Loki slants him an amused look, trails his eyes down to Clint’s bare chest and then back to his face. “Identification number CB2506. Prior agent name of Hawkeye, prior operative of STRIKE Team Delta. Please connect me to Agent Coulson.”

There’s a pause as Loki is put on hold, and Clint can almost hear SHIELD’s awful hold music in his own head as Loki taps his fingers on the table. Loki motions for him to continue eating and Clint obliges, tucking back into his eggs and bacon. Strangely enough, he’s starving. He hasn’t eaten like this in...well, months.

Loki pushes over his own half-eaten plate when Clint finishes clearing his, and Clint sends him a grateful grin and pulls it over.

“Agent Coulson,” Loki greets in his own voice, and he leans back in his chair and smiles. “I’m surprised you survived. The wound would have killed a weaker man.” Whatever Coulson says in response to that merely makes Loki smile wider. “Yes, I do have Barton with me, and no, I did not force him to write you that letter. He made that decision all on his own.” Loki pauses as Coulson says something. “Hmmm. Yes, I suppose you can talk to him. Clint, do you wish to talk to Coulson?”

When Clint opens his mouth to answer—he honestly doesn’t know if he wants to or not—Loki holds up his hand and then talks into his phone in Clint’s voice. It makes Clint shiver again and he takes a gulp of coffee and then slides under the kitchen table, scoots between Loki’s spread knees. He’s wearing black pants that Clint doesn’t recognize but are similar to sweats, and Clint reaches up to tug them down. Loki lifts his hips, spreads his knees, and drops his free hand down to hold his cock for Clint.

“I was thinking about it before New York,” Loki continues in Clint’s voice, and Clint leans forward, sends a warm breath over Loki’s cock, watches as it twitches and jumps. “I’ve been doing this for a decade, sir.”

Clint leans forward and takes the head of Loki’s cock in between his lips, suckles on it, and then Loki’s hand moves forward and digs into his hair, drags him forward until he’s buried in the sparse curls at the base of Loki’s semi-hard cock. Clint moans and swallows around him, eyes rolling in the back of his head. Loki kicks the leg of the table and sends it skittering back so he can look down at Clint. Clint meets his gaze. _Good boy,_ Loki mouths, and his hand softens on Clint’s head, lets him slowly and wetly and agonizingly pull back down to the head of his cock, curl his tongue around it, moans at the taste of the pre-come on his tongue.

“You recruited me, sir. You’re aware of what I’m capable of, and I want to use those skills for something better.” Loki snorts the way Clint would snort in amusement; if he wasn’t so fucking horny, it’d be impressive, but he’s too focused on the heavy weight on his tongue and down his throat to think about it. “No, Loki doesn’t have anything to do with it.”

Clint sucks him back down and Loki’s cock hardens further, pushes at the back of his throat, and Clint gags a bit against it, and then does it again when he feels Loki’s hips twitch. He can usually ignore his gag reflex but this time he pushes into it, lets himself drool and choke, all the while Loki is still talking to Coulson. He tries to make Loki falter, tries to make him stutter, but Loki doesn’t miss a beat. Loki’s hand tightens in his hair and holds him right in the spot that makes Clint gag, makes his eyes water, makes him choke and drip drool down his tongue and he can hear it hit the floor, one drop at a time.

“Oh, of course, sir,” Loki purrs in Clint’s voice. “I’d be happy to come in. Now, is that all?”

A few seconds later, Loki puts down the phone with a clatter, and his other hand wraps around the back of Clint’s head and absolutely shoves him down the entire length of Loki’s dick. Loki moans and then cuts himself off to say, “You know, when you were under my control, I removed the power of the Scepter once.”

Clint grunts and swallows around Loki’s length, tries to give Loki a questioning look with his teary eyes. Loki’s hand comes around to cup his jaw, lift his chin a little, open his throat a bit more as his shoulders slump forward. His thumb strokes the stretch of Clint’s lips as he says, “You found a room for me in that warehouse, made up a bed for me, and would stand watch all night if I asked. And I did ask. You would sit in a chair next to my bed with your bow in your hand, and you’d kill anyone who came in. You did once, if you remember.” Loki strokes his hair and pulls Clint off of him so he can talk with a clear mind, smiling at the way Clint stares at his cock, dripping with pre-come and saliva.

“It was one of Selvig’s assistants, I believe. Some nameless thing. They knocked and walked in, and you shot them right between the eyes. I woke up a few hours later to see a dead body on the floor, and I knew right then that I was going to keep you no matter what.”

Heat rushes through Clint, floods him, and he licks his lips, tries to push forward to swallow Loki down again, but Loki keeps him back, lets him hang there and pant for it.

“I laid you out on my bed and stripped you down to your bare skin, and once I was inside you, I put the Scepter to your chest and watched you come back to yourself. Then I held you down and fucked you until you came all over yourself and passed out. Then I made you mine again with the Scepter and woke you up, told you to get dressed and to meet me outside. You walked around all that day with my come inside of you and you never blinked once at it.”

The hand in Clint’s hair loosens enough that he can surge forward again and engulf Loki’s cock. He doesn’t remember that at all. He remembers everything else, remembers every single solitary detail, but not that. He remembers begging to serve Loki, remembers promising that he’ll make it good, remembers doing everything to make Loki’s life easier and to accomplish his goals. But he doesn't remember that.

When Loki comes, Clint strokes his cock as he spurts into his mouth, and he opens his mouth and shows Loki the come on his tongue before he swallows it down.

“What did I do when you removed the Scepter’s power?” Clint asks, blushing a bit at the way he sounds hoarse and fucked out. He slides out from under the table and retakes his seat, and, panting, finishes both his coffee and Loki’s.

“You fought,” Loki replied, “and you nearly fought me off. But then you stopped, and then you laid there and just watched me. You didn’t do anything as I fucked you other than look at me, but that was enough.” He reaches down to tuck himself back into his pants and then stretches across the table to slide a hand down to Clint’s crotch.

Clint shivers as Loki strokes him, but pushes him away after just a minute. At Loki’s questioning look, Clint rubs the back of his neck and mumbles, “I like to be made to wait.”

Loki smiles, moves his hand up to stroke again over the length of Clint’s arm. “Coulson wishes for you to go into SHIELD headquarters to talk to him. Do you wish to?”

“I’m going to have to do exit interviews,” Clint sighs. “Talk to their psychoanalysts, risk assessors, all that. It’s gonna take awhile.” He gets up and gathers all their dishes and silverware, takes it over to the sink and rinses everything out before putting it all in the dishwasher, thinking as he does. “They’re going to try to get me to stay. Raise my salary, better benefits, work better hours, all that jazz.”

“I could merely whisk you away,” Loki offers, and Clint considers it. Heavily considers it. “It is not as if we can stay on Midgard, after all.”

“Where would we go?”

Loki doesn’t answer for long enough that Clint turns around and looks at him. Loki is sprawled out in his chair, hair mussed, a bit of flush still in his cheeks, legs open, a bit of a bulge at his crotch where his cock is soft. Clint fights the urge to kneel in front of him again. “Anywhere we want,” Loki tells him, voice soft and gentle, and Clint smiles at him.

* * *

When Phil Coulson and Natasha Romanoff finally gain entry into Clint Barton’s apartment, it’s empty. Even more surprisingly, it’s clean. Natasha runs upstairs to the bedroom while Phil looks around the lower level, raising his eyebrows at how immaculate everything is. There’s no pile of pizza boxes, no crowd of beer bottles on all the tables, no clothes thrown everywhere, nothing that Phil had seen every other time he’d stopped by. It looks generic, almost, like someone else could move in and make the space their own.

Phil looks around for a minute and then realizes the strangest part: there’s no arrows anywhere, no holes in the walls, nothing purple, obnoxious or otherwise. 

He sits down at the kitchen table and picks up the letter with his name on it. He fiddles a bit with it as he waits for Natasha to come back downstairs, and when she does, she looks distraught.

“All his clothes are gone,” Natasha tells him, and she slowly sits down at the seat across from him, picking up the letter addressed to her. Neither of them unfold them, not yet. “There’s not even anything here that says he ever even lived here. The entire place has been scrubbed clean.”

“I talked to Loki,” Phil tells her, even though he’s fairly sure she already knows. “Loki took him.”

Natasha nods. She thinks about what she knows about her best friend and thinks about how he changed after New York, thinks about how they used to bunk together at SHIELD and how Clint would wake up in the middle of the night _whining_ for Loki. She thinks a lot of things, and finally says, “Loki didn’t take him. Clint went with him willingly.”

She opens the letter.

She crumples it in her fist after she reads it, and after Phil reads his, he doesn’t fault her for her behavior. He holds a hand out and she shoves the letter into his hand, takes a few deep breaths, and shoves to her feet. She doesn’t seem like she knows what she wants to do, so Phil watches her as she looks around, something strange in her gaze.

Phil doesn’t have to read her letter to know what Clint said. “He didn’t leave you,” Phil tells her, trying to be gentle. He knows Natasha as well as anyone other than Clint can know her. He knows that she loves deeply and fiercely and rarely. He knows that she loves Clint, most likely more than she even knows. He’s seen the two of them on missions together, seen them between missions, seen the way they look at each other, seen the way Natasha has fallen asleep in common rooms when she’s leaning against Clint and how she still doesn’t trust Phil after knowing him for almost a decade. “I think he wanted this for a long time and that he couldn’t turn it down when it was presented to him.”

Natasha nods. She moves over to the fridge and opens it, sighs at the lack of food. When they left, they completely cleaned house. “He talked to that therapist?”

“Yes,” Phil tells her. “He went to every session and stayed the full hour.” Here, he gets uncomfortable, and Natasha can sense it, closing the fridge door and looking at him. “We scoured her office and found no trace of her. Or Clint.”

Natasha’s mouth turns down in a frown. “Any notes from the sessions?”

Phil just shakes his head. There’d been nothing. Absolutely nothing. Their surveillance had seen Clint going into the building twice a week, stayed for an hour, and left. Other than the last time, it had all gone perfectly routine. There was nothing else in that building that Clint would’ve done other than go to his mandated therapy, and they hadn’t been able to put agents physically in the building given the security concerns.

She sighs. “So, what now?”

Phil looks down at the letter and glances over Clint’s familiar scrawl. It’s an apology, mostly, for leaving without warning, and Clint tells him again that he’d been thinking about leaving SHIELD since before New York, that Loki was just the catalyst, for that and a lot of other things. Beyond the apology, Phil sees that Clint is happy with his decision, and that’s what seals it for him.

“Agents, stand down,” he speaks into the microphone in his wrist. “Clint Barton is no longer an agent of SHIELD or any United States government agency. He is hereby terminated from employment.” He hopes that wherever Clint is, he can hear him.

Regretfully, he watches Natasha leave the apartment. He wishes he could’ve done more for her.

Very far away, from both the clean apartment and from anyone he knew on Earth, Clint Barton stands on a planet and looks up at the two suns overhead in the silver sky. It’s beautiful. More beautiful than anything else he’s ever seen. The sky is clear and the ground beneath them is strange, and Clint can’t wait to learn all about it.

From the small cabin behind him, he hears Loki open the door and then walk down the steps. Clint can barely spend any time inside with how beautiful it is here. Loki stops next to him and rests his hand on Clint’s lower back, and Clint leans into him.

“It’s incredible,” Clint breathes, and he stretches up to press a kiss to the corner of Loki’s lips before looking back out over the vast horizons, over the peculiar planet before them, over the strange shadows cast by the two suns.

Loki doesn’t follow his gaze. Instead he keeps his eyes on Clint as he murmurs, with a small, fond smile, “Yes. It is.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you so much to everyone who read, left kudos, and most especially left comments! i appreciate it all so much and am always inspired by a good response to a fic to write more. hope everyone enjoyed!

**Author's Note:**

> thank you for reading! hope you enjoyed. please leave kudos and reviews
> 
> follow me:  
> tumblr: @deluxemycroft  
> twitter: @whenhedied


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